Excited debate in the French National Assembly about Poland. I didn't quite grasp what it was all about and I have not seen any more since.

Wednesday (2 Feb): I started watching a CNN interview with Victor Yuschenko,
but switched over in their interval to something on French TV and stayed
with that. This was a programme about Turkey, Islam and Europe. This is the
sort of discussion programme we don't get much of in the UK. Apart from Michel
Rocard, they had several people who had written books in some ways related
to the subject - in fact, including Michel Rocard who's also got a book out.
Alongside Rocard, speaking in favour of Turkey's accession to the EU,
was a 'Franco-Turk'.

Those against were the familiar combination of feminists and secularists
with conservatives and 'isolationists' (for want of a better word). Does
Europe want a border with Iran, Iraq etc.? Wouldn't Turkey be a Trojan horse
for Britain & America? And so on. Alain Minc has warned against the EU
expanding so far that it becomes a 'regional subsidiary of UN' (Le Monde, 1-2 Feb). The obvious difference is that the EU demands certain standards of democracy and human rights.

One woman spoke about Turkey having an Islamist government, citing the FT
from early December. If this was referring to a long article by Vincent Boland,
'Eastern Premise', in the Magazine of 4 Dec, I thought that was quite favourable
towards Turkey and Erdogan. Another point brought up was that Turkey's Prime
Minister sends his daughters abroad so that they can do their studies veiled
(see my post
from October for this and other issues that keep being brought up). What
does this in fact reveal? That Turkey has a secular state where, like in
France, there are bans on the wearing of headscarves, but that as a matter
of personal choice Erdogan prefers to send his daughters where
they can wear headscarves. Of the girls' preference in the matter we are
not told.

The core issue in my opinion is, what would Turkey do, if denied entry
to the EU? I suspect that, for many people, the answer is, we don't
care.

Since I last wrote about Turkey, there has been a bit of serious notice taken in the UK (see here),
in response to an article by Prof. Hans-Ulrich Wehler. This 'has some unfortunate
historical echoes: “Das Türkenproblem” '.

Going back to France, politicians there fall into a grid of all the possible
combinations from 'oui-oui' (yes to the constitution, yes to Turkey) to 'non-non'
(Le Monde, 1-2 Feb, again).